rambling

[raincloudblessed]

care

i remember looking out to the balcony seeing my father's back as smoke billowed out of his mouth. i had dreams that the skyline was on fire, smoke tumbling towards the skies as he held the crumbling buildings between his fingers.

my sister was born, and i didn't find him outside on the balcony anymore, where his back used to be impenetrable, but the buildings were still on fire, smoke tumbling towards the skies as his spine creaked forward, protective over life and rage.

my mother warned to never trust someone who can give up an addiction like it never meant anything to them in the first place,

which is to say there is someone who lives in my blood with the power to conjure up storms and the insanity to leave that behind.

i don’t know where he ends and i begin. i don’t know how to trust that this voice loves me with enough life and rage to leave behind a burning past

like it never meant anything to him in the first place.

[raincloudblessed]

the haunting

in the morning           (is it even morning?) this body is not mine–– an oversized costume with too much wiggle room. i fall out of myself way too often, left behind while my body tries to stay alive.

this is the haunting of my body as it tries to stay alive. in the mourning, i wake up untethered unable to claim this body           as my own unable to claim this life           as my own

[raincloudblessed]

Mother of humanity

Dear Eve,

How are you? How have you been? Have you left space in your heart to love yourself? I’m sorry that you were manipulated And lied to. The devil Sounded sweet when all he wanted Was to break you apart mercilessly, Separate you from the very people That you thought would fight for you until the end. I’m sorry that Adam was not What you were promised; He thought of you as a tumor, His body trying to reject The very existence of you. Woman borne out of man’s ribs, Thrown away at a moment’s notice.

Mother of Humanity, Sons borne out of pain and guilt; You must have believed That you were the embodiment of suffering. No love and compassion to save you from How much you hated yourself.

Paint her in adultery, and Fruit becomes a metaphor for sex, Not a metaphor for the way That the serpent grabbed your wrist, Bruised your skin, And whispered promises  With the scent of apples  Hiding the poison in his heart.

No one believed you, and You were thrown out. I hope, above all, that you learned To forgive yourself, to tell yourself the truth.

Mother of Humanity, Weeping for those unjustly thrown away.

[raincloudblessed]

coffee date

I don’t know why I’m here, looking at you across the table. Your hands twitch around the coffee cup that you’ve been cradling in your hands. The grain in the table is scattered, splintered wood; if I rub my hands against the surface, I know I’ll bleed.

You shudder when you bring your coffee to your lips, the warmth at war with this frigid cold, and I wonder what it must be like to love hard enough that the shaking stops.

“It’s cold now isn’t it?” I say, which is to say that I don’t know you anymore, and it’s been too long since I last did.

You nod, and I notice that you haven’t looked at me since we got here. Something leaves my mouth in the form of a sigh, or a word, or an accusation. I see your lips move, but I can’t hear. your hands run across the table, catching the splinters, bleeding in apology. Crimson over a fading mahogany, rotting wood.

[raincloudblessed]

Before you know it

Before you know it, you’re stewing in the bog of your own self-hatred, and before you know it, you’re submerged in the dark and thick. The poison enters your lungs and it is pain you’ve never thought possible, but the heaviness of this swamp prevents you from thrashing, from crying out for help.

But before you know it, something in you compels you to lift up your hands and pull yourself up from this sewage (call it survival instincts, a sudden appreciation for life, stubbornness). You arise from the murky waters––stagnant and cold––and you find that shimmering nighttime lake that holds every star in the sky. Before you know it, you’re surrounded by the moonlit waters and your heart glows warm underneath the stars as the caked mud washes off of you.

Your skin breathes, every part of you drinking in the night, the midnight sky, the moon making communion with these waters. And before you know it, you realize that this is what it means to desire life.

[raincloudblessed]

unfolding

you blank thing, piece of paper, clean slate, waiting to be written on. the indents of this pen forming valleys to lead  into oceans never ending

you––confession. folded three times and tucked away  into the pockets of his heart. you wish to be branded onto his aortas and chambers, pumping this ink into every part of him that breathes.

but he is a wild thing, and ink is as permanent as the air that escapes his lungs, and you––confession, blank thing–– find yourself trampled on the ground, no longer blank, still confession.

you stubborn thing, unfold yourself as needed, find a new canvas to tattoo yourself on. unfold three times, and let the confession breathe on its own, not dependent on someone else’s blood.

you stubborn confession, blank thing no longer. your valleys run abundant, and he is no longer  the signpost to pin yourself on.

[raincloudblessed]

you are learning to speak again

you silent thing. sewed shut lips, you horrid thing. scratch marks at your neck, you, thing. taught that noise is destruction, that living is disdain, that a sign of your life is the sign of an apocalypse. even the blood in your veins trickle meekly and with no bravado, the way that it's supposed to, to let everyone know that you are— silent thing—meant to be weeping with life.

but one day, your laugh will be raucous. one day your footsteps will thunder and every sign of life in you will reverberate into the earth, out into the ocean, and the tsunamis that rise, will be a sign of your second coming— crowned glory atop your horribly mangled head, your arrival into the explosive masterpiece of yourself,

and you will be more than what your silence carried.

[raincloudblessed]

fading life

the bed is on fire. a brilliant glow engulfs the room, and soon, there will only be warmth. this must be what it is like to be alive; 

but through half-lidded eyes, the fire is dimmed, its brilliance flickering. waking up to something so large, something burning, is becoming accustomed to being blinded. this brilliant glow had engulfed the room but sits in the corner, out of reach. through half-lidded eyes, the distance between stretches out for miles.

the bed is on fire, but it looks like a small ember, the promise of warmth fading, the promise of life fading. closed eyes sever this spectacle from the observer, and the memory of a brilliant glow falls gently onto the temples of  a resting body.

[raincloudblessed]

giving

he closes his eyes and can feel his empty chest grasping for something that used to be there. breath flows into his lungs and there is almost too much space to breathe. it feels like he’s suffocating from just being alive.

there is no space in hell for the selfish and delusional. their patrons are realists who see the world painted in gray with pockets of sunshine and darkness, but he can only see its emptiness. he can only see pockets of bright red where his blood is displayed, reminders of how he tried to bring people back to life. he is delusional because there is no one that can love him like this, and he is selfish because this is the only way he wants to be loved.

when he ran out of heart to give, he started to give his liver. then his stomach. then his small intestine, his guts. then he started to forget where he left his mind and that his bones were not meant to crumble like this. on the floor, his soul lays crying, desperately sinking into the earth to find life again, but this brittle body still has the strength to keep his soul imprisoned. this soul is all that he has left; and it feels so deeply, every emotion that comes, comes like tidal waves, and hell cannot be put out when it burns so deep inside.

this is all to say, he is an echo chamber of his own whispers, painfully repeating insanity that makes his chest want to hold on to a bleeding, beating anchor when the voices greedily want to take him away.

[raincloudblessed]

must have

i must have really loved you to listen to this song and cry to listen to the way he sings in his hushed tones, singing about “tell me you don’t want to leave” 

i must have really wanted you to stay to feel my heart break when i realize that i won’t be there next to you anymore and that we won’t be growing together

i must have really lost my mind when you stood up and walked away towards the sun and better things; the horizon greets you with open arms.

i must have misunderstood when you told me that this was special that this was something that would last through the ages, stand against the storms.

--

there you are with your completed life. you weave a heavy and thick quilt with all of its colors and magnificence, and anything that catches your eye will be caught in the spaces between. you see me, and i cannot fit in the vastness of you; i’m too jagged, too broken, too much of an unfinished thing to fit into the grand scheme of your brilliant life where roses bloom into fireworks and my weeds must be removed. 

i must have really loved you  to want to be whole again.

[raincloudblessed]

imagination

can you imagine my bones breaking for you? nothing can be the same when this heart is caged so tightly in my ribs. i can only imagine the sun doing that thing where its rays escape through the trees and you are embraced in the hold of its refugees. i can only imagine nature when i think of you. there are no words, nothing manmade that can capture the fleeting desire that comes from your gaze.

something so fleeting is so heavy, and i can feel my bones breaking, my heart fluttering and beating, eager to escape and find refuge in your bleeding mouth, fangs bare and sharp.

[raincloudblessed]

7:44 PM

i love when the sun has just set, and the sky is shy of its vibrance. it hides its beauty––the reds and oranges––in these purples and pinks, revealing just enough of its secrets as it stretches out over me and paints these clouds in light hues. the sky says goodbye to this day and welcomes in the night, and it’s a bittersweet farewell. the sun disappears under the horizon and is swallowed up by the bitter earth and the sky, it holds onto the sun’s gift in fading desperation.

i am in love with this fading desperation, a love letter about holding on and fighting the inevitable. i can’t help but notice that behind me, away from where the sun sets, where the sky must part from its love, the storm clouds brew to herald in the night, and even they cannot help but be painted in deep purple and soft pink. even they cannot help but be loved by the sun.

saying goodbye to this day, i am in love with “just about” and secrets and the dull glow of a purple sky.

[raincloudblessed]

subject

do i even write to you anymore? do i write to anyone at all? is there someone at the end of these love poems and metaphors to catch my words and feelings tied together in a beautiful golden knot? can there be anyone at all if my heart is sorely missing something it never had, spewing out lines like clockwork where violet looks like love and red looks like blood? am i looking at you or the outline of you, penciled into my notebook like a last minute thought, smudged at the edges but hard where it counts?

i used to know who you were, way back then. i used to know that when you said my name, it would sound like candy swirling around in your mouth, and that your eyes were thirsty for more than what i could offer, drinking in the universe when you were done with the world. you are just a faded memory now, where the strings that attach you to my heart are like webs, delicate but strong, vibrating every time a new memory flies by to remind me of the way we used to sit so close to each other. i used to sit so close to you. i used to drink in as much as i could because i knew that one day, the indent in your chair would get cold, and i would be left with the ghost of a smile, fluttering against my lips.

[raincloudblessed]

growing up

i used to love fantasy––vast worlds to explore and monsters to challenge me into a battle––and i used to love the romantic appeal of victory that comes out of fighting for a just cause, and i used to love romance, but maybe i didn’t really know what that was when i was a kid because all i knew was that people would fall in love and look at each other like the other held oceans in their eyes, illuminated by the stars that beheld them, shimmering in the push and pull of the waves, which is all to say that i used to love love before the stone walls of this vast castle caved in on me and the oceans i saw siphoned into a murky moat to keep the outsiders away; they never went away.

[raincloudblessed]

similar

what is so beautiful

about a thunderstorm?

that something is as dark

and intense as the inside

of my chest, that my mind

has a friend in the sky;

that we are alike in ways that

make the rain clouds

surge in bright and blinding

electric joy.

[raincloudblessed]

thunder

this storm understands me. all of that energy being stored inside, charged inside thin and temporary vessels like clouds, they need to release, to scream, to let go of that pain hidden in its throat.

it roars and destroys, and its tears fall heavily to earth, and it cleanses the ground, shadowing over everything in the process. everything must be released over this land before it moves on to the next, before it can bless someone else with this downpour.

i am afraid of ending, of being destroyed in this storm, of being removed, but it’s so beautiful to behold. it is so beautiful to love and to watch. the winds bring the rain and it is all of that, beautiful and engulfing

[raincloudblessed]

alone in a storm

this man is sitting in front of me, alone on a park bench in the middle of an incoming storm; his blue shirt reminiscent of what the sky is supposed to look like in all of this gray. i wonder why he’s here. probably for some simple reason, like wanting to get some fresh air, or wanting to get out of the house for a while, or wanting to stretch his old bones. but what if he’s like me? overwhelmed by this world, by what’s happening inside of his head, overwhelmed by wondering if this is all that there is. in that, we are both alone. we are both hurting. but we are both here. and even thought i don’t know him, even though i do not love him, i am greatly comforted, that we are so many, just here, waiting for the storm to roll through.